Idols I have Loved so Long
by EKBlack
Summary: A trippy thing that I came up with after rereading the Kyoto Arc tanks. Involves Tsuzuki's past and a loooooong dream sequence (so don't read if you don't like those). Some T/H, T/T, possible OOCness (for a good reason). Enjoy! (Review too)
1. Prologue/Teaser

Idols I have Loved so Long

By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )

Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. Otherwise, I'd put myself in the canon...

All comments, etc., are welcome. Notify before archiving. Slight T/H, T/T. Takes place sometime after Kyoto Arc but before Gensou Kai Chapter. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~

****

Idols I have Loved so Long-A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction

TEASER/PROLOGUE

*

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long

Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong;

Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup,

And sold my Reputation for a Song.

-_The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_, LXIX

***

Kurosaki Hisoka felt terribly ill. Propped up on his pillows, he tried to remember if he had eaten anything his stomach was rebelling against and concluded that it must have been the spoonful of chocolate mousse he'd eaten last night at the Shokan division's group dinner. This particular chocolate mousse had the misfortune of being prepared by one Tsuzuki Asato, chef terrible. Hisoka covered his eyes and groaned. "How could I have possibly eaten...ugh..." After a few moments of cursing his own stupidity, he tried to move sideways and out of bed, but only succeeded in tumbling to the floor, where he fell feverishly asleep.

*

Tsuzuki regarded his sleeping partner worriedly. "He was muttering about moose..." 

"As if that holds any importance to the situation." Tatsumi Seiichiro, official secretary of Emma-cho, had a reputation for a nasty temper, especially in the mornings and especially as pertaining to Tsuzuki Asato. They were both in the hospice after Tsuzuki had been send to fetch the unusually late Hisoka and had found the latter lying half-naked on the floorboards and mumbling. The boy had been carried to the hospice bed he now occupied with great exertion on the part of his partner, not because he was particularly weighty (just the opposite, in fact), but because he continously thrashed at nothings in the air with his arms and legs and yelled sporadically the whole way. Watari had managed to get him quieted with a dose of...something (he had assured both of his colleagues that it was definitely safe and foolproof, to their great skepticism). "Leave him here," said the blond, bespectacled Shinigami, softly so as not to disturb the sleeper, "I'll take care of Hisoka-chan, no problem." 

Tatsumi had to half-drag Tsuzuki along the corridor (drawing many strange looks). "Pull yourself together!" He said at last, exasperated. 

"But he looks really sick and I don't wanna go work I wanna watch him--" said Puppy-Tsuzuki, tears forming small waterfalls. 

"Ah, he'll be okay." Tatsumi pushed up his glasses. "Come on. Unless you want to pay your debts _now_ ? I'll take them, you know."

"Eeep!" 

*

Hisoka's subconscious dimly sensed their movements as they grew farther and farther away; close by there was the jumbled greenish mass of Watari's thoughts, with 003's small white owlish presence fluttering about. He felt cold and weak and small and wondered why. There was something soft and heavy on his face, pressing on his eyelids and the slim bridge of his nose and trying to suffocate him, trying to pry open his mouth and eat him as he swallowed it. He was not frightened, though. It seemed somehow wonderful, being possessed by this unseen thing. It was not conscious; he could not hear its mental mutterings at all. It was white, it was pure, and so he opened his mouth and let it in joyfully, with no hesitation.

*

He fell through layers of something; after a long while he realized that this was the same thing that had eaten him from the inside out; it must be growing from him and surrounding him like a cocoon. He smiled and relaxed into its softness. He had always wanted something, some barrier, between himself and the Others. The Other minds and the Other thoughts: they were so frightening, foreign. The cocoon _was_ him and he _was_ it. He wanted to stay in it forever and ever and ever...

*

He woke without opening his eyes (he wasn't sure if he even _had_ eyes, now) and immediately curled into a ball. The soft cocoon wasn't there. He was exposed and naked and from a thousand, a million directions came the little pricklings of Otherness, like the thorn that is only a tiny wound alone but kills in multitudes. He shrank from it, keening, and tried to protect his body from the attack. 

*

Watari quirked an eyebrow as his charge threatened to tumble from his bed for the fourth time. Hisoka was struggling against the covers, weakly, his face red and contorted with fear and pain and fever. Watari sighed and yawned--it was late--and gave the boy another dose of his new invention for a better rest. The entire day had been full of Hisoka's anguished cries and thrashing about. The poor boy deserved some real sleep, at least.

*

Tsuzuki lay awake, his elbows under his ears. The ceiling wasn't very interesting, so he turned to the wall and the window. It was dark, and he prodded himself. No sleepiness whatsoever. He wondered how Hisoka was doing; with that thought he felt a rush of guilt. It had nibbled at the edges of his mind all through the day; he dropped his papers constantly (even more often than usual), he found it hard, even, to pay attention to his cake. More than once he'd started to walk towards the hospice, only to return to his office for fear of having Tatsumi lecture him again. For some reason he was decidedly uneasy about something. What was it?

*

There were many lights; he saw a sea of red-lined pink from behind his eyelids. Somewhere there was a loud long squealing noise, accompanied by hushed, excited voices. He was cold again, and panicked when he couldn't remember his own name. He thought that maybe it began with an S? It had an S in it somewhere. He also couldn't remember anything before he had come to be lying here, (whereever here was), except that there had been a warm place, soft and comfortable. This had to be some kind of punishment. Yes; it must be for some crime he'd committed that he had been taken from his warm place. He wanted to shout for someone--some part of his mind wanted to call out for someone that was warm and comforting like the warm place--he couldn't remember that someone's name either...he hoped the someone would come anyway, and cried. And he opened his eyes.

To Be Continued


	2. Chapter 1

Idols I have Loved so Long

By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )

Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. Otherwise, I'd put myself in the canon...

All comments, etc., are welcome. Notify before archiving. Slight T/H, T/T. Takes place sometime after Kyoto Arc but before Gensou Kai Chapter. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~

****

Idols I have Loved so Long-A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction

CHAPTER ONE

*

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long

Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong;

Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup,

And sold my Reputation for a Song.

-_The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_, LXIX

***

"Unlocking gates two through seventeen. Check." _Beep_. 

"Unlocking extreme gates. Check." _Beep-click-beep_. 

Where was he?

All he could see was a square of white that shone with incredible ferocity. Squirming, he turned his face aside and tried to rise, failed, and stopped struggling. It--the light--was making him so tired. So tired. A small bit of him desperately fought against falling asleep, against the will of the light, of the coldness...he ached for someone to come to his rescue. Someone he didn't quite remember. The memory of this someone was closely associated with one of the presences he could feel nearby. It was all so wrong...so wrong...

*

The purple-eyed child floated, pale and curled like a misshaped pearl under the light of his illuminated tank. He had been moved there recently from his womb--his metal-plated, insulated womb. How he'd entered the womb only two of the five men huddled around the tank knew. The others were mere students, brought here exclusively for the analysis of such a rare speciman. They were deferential and courteous to their elders, the actual creators of the whole project. Behind the backs of these same elders they whispered of the maniac glitter in the eyes and the quiver on the edge of the lips that the two older men always displayed when examining their precious speciman. "They're nuts," the youngest said; "They've _been_ nuts," said the eldest. "Who else would do something like this?" The other man, with spectacled eyes--the other boy, really; all three were under twenty--said nothing. He merely watched as his sensei stood recording the newest data for the child.

*

Watari Yukata sighed deeply and avoided looking at either the sleeping Hisoka or at Tsuzuki, who he knew from experience to be staring pathetically at his partner. "Tsuzuki," he said finally, trying to be gentle, "you've been watching Hisoka-chan for hours. It's not going to work. Go home and get some sleep. I promise to get you if he shows any inclination of waking up." Tsuzuki turned a fraction and mournfully sniffled, complete with puppy accessories. "Well fine then," said Watari, somewhat annoyed but a little relieved that he could go off and experiment without having to worry about Hisoka rolling out of his bed and bashing his head open, "give him this--"he held up a vial of semitransparent fluid"--in an hour. He shouldn't give you any trouble. If he starts thrashing around again come and get me." With that and a small smile of Evil Scientist(TM) triumph at his extended lab time, Watari disappeared out the door with 003 on his shoulder.

Tsuzuki watched his partnet sleep and wanted to shake him, to wake him up. It had been almost three days--he corrected himself as his watch beeped midnight--it _had_ been three days since he had discovered the boy sprawled on the floor of his apartment, moaning about his stomachache and moose. He reached out and patted the white forehead that was moist with sweat. Whatever Hisoka was dreaming about, it probably wasn't very pleasant.

*

He could sense presences; both were unfamiliar. The noise, filtered through the bubbling fluids of his tank and the heavy glass wall, was dull and rumbled like a distant storm. But he could read their thoughts, even half-asleep, and knew there was a conflict. The warmer clot of orangish red was infuriated by something, and the other was a dismal grey with flits of a guilty violet-blue. And then there was a sound that cut through the liquid protection of his tank, and he heard and felt the lunge (all raging red) the scream, the heaving breath, the sound of a body dragged until it passed beyond earshot. The room grew dark from the lack of human presences, and he pondered. What could it have been?

*

What could it be? Tsuzuki held his chin, sipping at the mug of jasmine tea Watari had so kindly brought over half an hour ago. That something bothering him--it nagged and nagged, even worse than Tatsumi--something to do with the sleeping boy before him. Something to do with his illness. He had a dim feeling it had something to do with the vial of serum he'd poured down his partner's throat a little while before, but he couldn't be sure of what the feeling tried to say. Sighing, he cupped his chin in his hands and tilted his head onto the back of his chair. He'd take a little nap, and then he'd be able to figure it out.

Sometime before three o'clock in the morning, Hisoka's conscious mind tried to plunge through the effects of the sleeping serum and failed again, due to certain of the serum's odd behavior with a bit of chocolate mousse in the blood stream. The serum, under normal circumstances, would have had no such reaction with any food, but, oddly, the spoonful of dessert had numerous granules of rock containing rare metals ores in it. The resulting mix of serum and mousse produced a potent hallucinogen, which returned Hisoka to the dreams.

*

Tatsumi Seiichiro lived alone in his small shack of a flat that was really the converted top storey of a private home. He was in all ways a very dilligent, resourceful, but somewhat miserly young man. Miserly because he constantly had trouble purchasing the most common necessities due to a lack of funds. The owners of the private home--owner, now (his ancient wife had died two years prior)--sympathized with the young scientist and provided as much as he could. After all, nobody was close to rich in their area, and Tatsumi was a student of the renowned researchers Akino and Shun (the exceptions of course), and could be expected to earn lots of money in a Tokyo office one day.So the old man was hospitable enough to his boarder. 

Tonight Tatsumi arrived home late, and the old man invited him to take some food downstairs. "Are you all right, Tatsumi-san?" said the old man upon seeing his boarder's expression. 

"Fine, sir." Tatsumi concentrated on his bowl. "A little argument between Akino-sensei and Shun-sensei, is all."

The old man's eyes brightened. Even in the thirty-second year of the Emperor Meiji, life had not changed so much in this small town that gossip about its prominent citizens who lived in new-fangled wealth wasn't welcomed. "Ah," said the old man, feigning indifference, "why's that?"

Tatsumi looked up from his food and bent the corners of his mouth down, and the old man swallowed. It was silent in the downstairs room until Tatsumi's socked feet disappeared into his own room. Then his landlord muttered under his breath about the ungrateful young people these days, just like all old people do. But mixed in with the indignation was a little fear; Akino and Shun-tachi were rumored to hold secret experiments for the Imperial government in a sealed lab, preparing weapons or monsters or endless crops, depending on who one talked to. Hence another reason for the old landlord's servility to his boarder. One wouldn't want a monster-maker taking revenge for slights, now would one?

*

Behind his door, Tatsumi panted, lying face-down on the worn tatami. It had been hard going keeping appearances up before the old man. _Foolish people_, he thought, pulling himself onto his unrolled futon and leaning his back against it. Nobody except Shun and the two other students would know how far the argument had really gone. Nobody would know about the body that had been "disposed of" in an incinerator. 

*

__

"I'm his 'father', Shun! I ought to get the rights!"

"Akino, this is an Imperially funded project, remember? Not your _project."_

The purple-eyed child floating calm and white behind them.

__

"He ought to be given for reentry immediately! The child is physcially unable to kill!"

__

"You and I both know that's a lie, Akino! He can't just be given to some ignoramus to raise. He has the abilities that His Majesty ordered!"

"Shun, the child will be like an automaton! He won't follow orders!"

The shouting growing louder. The child starting to open its eyes, in the tank. It watched or heard or _sensed_ the battle between its creators, possibly more clearly than the three young men who were watching did. But after the fall and the arc of blood, it went back to its sleeping, leaving Shun and the students to clean up the tiled floor. The blood was especially hard to rub from the cracks between each tile.

"Haaagh!" Tatsumi woke, damp with sweat again, and put on his glasses with fumbling hands.Akino had been a rather handsome man in his early fifties, kindly enough except for when he watched _that terrible child_. The child who left a path of deaths in its wake so that its perfection could live. Akino-sensei had been right. The child should have been removed from its artificial environment and given away to someone, like a lost kitten. It was too beautiful to be a proper assassin. Shun-sensei was so stubborn, so fixed on his money (Imperial money!). Tatsumi covered his face and brought his closed fist as hard as he could on the tatami, causing the rickety walls of the house to shudder. He hated that child. It had been what killed Akino-sensei; it had killed its own creator. _Terrible child_. 

*

He opened the door of the hospice to find Tsuzuki still asleep, his chin high in the air, his mass of dark hair spilling down the back of the chair. The boy was still asleep. He put a hand on Tsuzuki's shoulder and shook. "Wake up."

"Eh? Meh-eh?" The purple eyes were so disconcerting. "Tatsumi-san! I didn't break it! It wasn't me! I was watching Hisoka the whole time!"

He couldn't help smiling. To make up for the lapse he put on his impassive expression as quickly as possible. "I came to get you for work."

"W-work?" 

"Yes." The old exasperation was coming on. That was good; he could see the puppy-dog eyes already. He'd need an ample defense against _those_. "You remember you still have...two hundred and ninety-eight years of work before you pay off the debt for the library (and of course then get fired)?"

"Eh? Ta-tsu-miiiii-saaaan!" Oh no. Inu-Tsuzuki blinked enormous eyes at him. _Purple._ He could never know what _purple eyes_ meant to his ex-partner. There had been a contract, after all, and Tatsumi Seiichiro had officially sworn not to reveal _anything_ about the past. About the labs, about Akino or Shun. "Ah, stop that," he stammered, backing away, "you--you--just get to work before noon, okay?" A burst of returning courage as he distanced the wagging tail and the eyes. "Or else the cake'll be all gone." Unsurprisingly, he heard footsteps behind him (running) and had to gratuitously sweatdrop as Tsuzuki rushed past him for the lounge (and the cake, untouched). 

*

Behind them, in the empty hospice that was slowly filling with midmorning sun like a cup into which was being poured a Bacchial amount of honey or cider, Hisoka's hair gleamed. And the hallucinogen, paired with his empathy, continued its work.

Note: ...0_o;;;

The trippy beginning of a trippy fic. *sweatdrops* And suddenly Muraki's past is looking like good fic material as well. Why couldn't Matsushita-sensei answer those lingering questions? (Answer: she wanted to sell her books. Evil woman.) Anyway, if there's anything that's confusing anyone, or if there's an annoying mechanics problem, feel free to tell me. I'll try to explain as best as I can (which isn't very good at all), or I'll go and fix it (I didn't proofread this at all. Not even a spellcheck). -e.k.b-


	3. Chapter 2

Idols I have Loved so Long

By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )

Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. Otherwise, I'd put myself in the canon...

All comments, etc., are welcome. Notify before archiving. Slight T/H, T/T. Takes place sometime after Kyoto Arc but before Gensou Kai Chapter. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~

****

Idols I have Loved so Long-A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction

CHAPTER TWO

*

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long

Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong;

Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup,

And sold my Reputation for a Song.

-_The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_, LXIX

***

Tatsumi Seiichiro arrived at the door of the secret lab the morning after the argument between Shun and   
Akino to discover it locked. Even his tiny custom-made key whose presence only five people--four now--knew of--failed in his repeated attempts to twist the lock into submission. From behind the door came the sound of hydraulic hissing and then a child's wail.

*

He had emerged from the muffled space of his tank. The small cross-currents of air in the room tingled against his skin; their touch was similar to the feel of a breeze on an unhealed cut. It was not exactly uncomfortable, aside from the chill, until he reached out, tentatively exploring, and touched the nearby violence of a convulsing mind and shrank back. He tried to scream and produced only a puny squawking whine. The futility of it made him panic, and he balked against the heaviness of a body that was holding him and was filled with disgust at his struggle. It was so much like someone else he had known...someone who had done terrible things to him in some other time and place. He wanted to call for his private savior, but the name still eluded him, so he simply tried to call out for anyone, letting his mind rove in wider and wider circles, trying to find some benign presence nearby, and suddenly discovered a familiar coil of thought, only they were a little altered, as though Tatsumi--he felt sure that this was indeed the name that belonged to that restless mind--was in a different body. 

Having detected an ally, he cried harder and thrashed, desperate for rescue, for the hands around him were lifting him as the horrible maddened mind that owned them cursed the small boy he held. _Monster_, said the madman's mind, spitting the brilliant magenta flame of unreasonable hatred, _you terrible thing. _The child in his arms shivered and the man laughed bitterly. Probably the little demon had actually heard his maledictions. Only the gods knew what kind of freakish powers the creature had. He wanted--longed--to smash its porcelain skin against the tiles and end its evil existence, and had brought it to the apex of its final descent into its deserved destruction when the door of the laboratory imploded with a resounding _crack_. 

*

The two men stared at each other. Shun laughed finally, his jaw twitching. "Tatsumi. Come here. Help me."

"Help...?" Tatsumi could not think, could not move. He swallowed and a pang of sudden nausea welled up from the pit of his gut and oozed, slowly, up. The room had gone frigid, but under his clothes he sweated. "Help...?"

Shun's eyes were hidden under his lenses, and he started to raise the child he'd lowered again. "Help me kill this abomination, this thing that was never meant to be." The child, who'd stopped its crying when Tatsumi had burst in, resumed its frantics sobbing.

"I--no." Tatsumi stepped carefully to his left, mind already detached and calculating how fast he could get at Shun without risking damage to himself or to the child. He looked up at Shun's face only once, and the expression there made his throat close on the lump that was forming there."Give it--him to me. I'll...I'll put him somewhere." He could not bring himself to say "get rid of it", which was odd, for he knew that he hated the perfection of the boy just as much as Shun did. The other man, still clutching the child, gaped at him, and Tatsumi had snatched the boy away before his teacher could react and dashed out of the room. The child snuffled against his sweat-dampened shirtfront.

*

"He's still asleep."

"Poor Hisoka-chan." Watari put down an armful of various gadgetry, including several extension lines, an aged Bunsen burner, half a dozen beakers nestled inside one another like a babushka doll, and a large pair of crucible tong, and stuck the thermometer between Hisoka's dry, slightly parted lips and wiggled it gently under the tongue. "Perfectly normal," said Watari, perplexed, as he removed it. He wiped his glasses and scrutinized the line of red and the small black numbers printed beside it again and then shoved the thermometer in front of Tsuzuki. "See? He's just sleeping, now. No fever." But Tsuzuki had nodded off where he sat, face pressed against the edge of Hisoka's narrow mattress, the twilight Meifu sun a bar of gold on his back. Shaking his curled head, Watari left to fetch Tatsumi. It wasn't that easy to haul Tsuzuki any distance on one's own, and a sleeping Tsuzuki didn't help the situation.

*

He was set down somewhere after being jostled for a long while by Tatsumi, and was slowly falling asleep when a door opened behind him and a swoosh of warm air poured over him. The mind of the girl who was standing in the doorway was as warm as her house, although a spasm of surprise ran though her when she saw him, a disheveled child of maybe a year or so of age and shivering in someone's abandoned overcoat and otherwise naked. He was confused for a moment, because the girl was somehow connected to that someone whose name he still could not recall, the someone he had been trying to call all this time. She picked him up, murmuring soothing things while wondering what she would do with him, and took him inside her house.

*

Tsuzuki Ruka lived alone. She preferred it this way, having been raised by relatives who had later fallen into a deep disagreement with their orphaned charge and had summarily given her a sum of money and told her to go live somewhere. Somewhere far away. So she'd come here, this drowsy town where the bustle of Tokyo seemed thousands of miles away. The school where she taught was respectable enough, and her landlord was away for most of the year, leaving her alone in the large complex. Occasionally she'd venture from her room and wander through his gardens, admiring the fine plants and large plots of raked sand and the great care of the gardeners to feed the gorgeous _koi_ every morning and the small red bridges that crossed the fishpond. It was rather dull, but peaceful enough. 

The arrival of the child consternated her for a long time. Obviously he hadn't simply appeared on the premises one morning; the coat he'd been huddled in must have belonged to someone who cared for him. She spent an afternoon writing large notices for the owner to claim his coat, but not unexpectedly no one replied to them, and they peeled and faded in the months she deliberated over taking in the child. In reality, there was no such indecision in her mind. She knew that she could not give him away after she named him, and she'd named him the very morning she had picked him up and taken him into the kitchen for a little porridge. The name was supposed to have been her father's father's; it was unusual enough and she though it went rather nicely with hers. 

The man at the Registry office had looked at her oddly when she had taken the boy there, probably because she looked far too young, also probably because she was unaccompanied by a husband. She could see his eyes flickering from her as she approached, the little boy's hand small in hers. Quietly she handed him her papers, and quietly the business of legalizing the name was finished. Most likely the man behind the desk thought she was a vulgar street woman, for she wasn't dressed in a fine kimono and silk socks with her hair piled and arranged like some of the rich _geisha_ that walked about in the town. A _geisha_ would have been handled delicately, with not one unconsidered word; she was stared at and she could almost hear the whispers. _A single woman with child!_

"It's nothing," she said confidingly to the boy as they walked home, reassuring herself. He watched her with large violet eyes, and her heart twinged wryly. It had been worth it. "You are Asato-chan now. Try saying it with me. 'Asato'."

"Asado."

"Close enough, Asato-chan." She straightened and continued home, marvelling at the child's precociousness. Where had he come from? Asato lagged a little behind her, and she turned and watched his entirely unchildish walk, the steadiness of his large eyes that understood everything. He was a wonderful child, she thought to herself, but he didn't like to smile. But maybe she'd teach him. They went into the garden and into the warm room.

*

They laid Tsuzuki on his bed as gently as they could and left him sleeping before it was fully dark outside. "That," said Watari as they sprang into the air, "was quite a flight." 

"Indeed." Tatsumi made a quick calculation of how many bills he could have filed away in the half an hour it had taken to drop Tsuzuki off at his house and frowned. "This means I shall have to work later. That means wasting more of the lightbulbs. And that means no cake for a week." He smiled. Watari gulped and wisely said nothing.

*

Tsuzuki woke sometime late in the night; his fumbling hands caught the clock and turned it to the slanting moonlight. _1:05_. Stretching, he sat up and started to reach for the light switch, and paused.His dreams had not been pleasant, and they were reforming in his memory. Dreams of death. Dreams of murder. He shivered and put his arms around himself, rubbing his upper arms that were still clothed in wrinkled shirt. He wanted someone else to be here, to sit warmly next to him, to watch over him, to be _near_. He hated loneliness almost as much as he hated the dark and the silent. It seemed to him that the shadowy places were always filled with hands that tried to seize him, whispering _return to us_, _return to us_. He shivered again, uncontrollably, and felt the beginnings of a sob rise into the back of his mouth. _Somebody...anybody..._he buried his face in his arms and rocked himself back and forth, not caring that the dislodged blankets that slipped onto the floor. He thought that he could hear a voice--his voice? It waas speaking, shouting, screaming a plea for someone to help. _Somebody...anybody..._ he closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, and tried to shut it out. Abruptly the shouting turned into another's voice, and he sat up, startled. _Hisoka?_

Help! Somebody!...Anybody!...

Hisoka? Tsuzuki stood, looking wildly about. "Hisoka?" He said to the empty room. "Hisoka?"

__

Please!...

"Where...where are you?"

Only gasping sobs.

"Are you all right? Are you hurt? Where?--"

And then nothing. Tsuzuki stood, paralyzed, and then leapt to the ledge of his window and clicked the lock open and swung out, towards JuOhCho.

Note: Remember Hisoka's "doubling-up" capacity from Vol. 1? But he doesn't know that Tsuzuki heard him yelling(hee, what a convenient plot device). I think this one is somewhat less trippy than Chapter One, and clarifies what exactly is happening to Hisoka as he sleeps...but still...0_0 Please notify me if you're helplessly confused or just think it's wonderful/mediocre/the worst thing you've ever read in your life. Hopefully it won't be the latter. ~__~ -e.k.b-


	4. Chapter 3

Idols I have Loved so Long

By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )

Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. Otherwise, I'd put myself in the canon...

All comments, etc., are welcome. Notify before archiving. Slight T/H, T/T. Takes place sometime after Kyoto Arc but before Gensou Kai Chapter. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~

****

Idols I have Loved so Long-A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction

CHAPTER THREE

*

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long

Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong;

Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup,

And sold my Reputation for a Song.

-_The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_, LXIX

***

A few minutes after midnight, Tatsumi Seiichiro was walking slowly and laboriously home. The streets were quiet and dark but he could see little sparks of werelight in the shadows. Pausing, he put his arms against someone's fence and leaned on it, panting a little. The coldness of it stabbing throught the sleeves of his sleeves brought him from his dizzyness and he shivered and began walking again. 

__

Stupid, he said to himself, _it's January_. His fingers fumbled a little with the key (colder than the fence) and dropped it with a frigid clank on the ground. He stooped to pick it up and almost hit his head on the doorknob when a tiny rustling step sounded behind him. The key fell again, but he ignored it and instead spun around wildly and tried to look intimidating (a very difficult task when one is drunk). "Who...?" Ever since that night with Shun and the child he'd stolen away and left on someone's front step, Tatsumi had been bordering on paranoia; this was the first time he had walked out after ten o'clock in nine years, for fear of Shun's demented gleaming eyes in a doorway ready to leap at him and quietly dispose of him. "Who?" At least he couldn't see any flitter of light bounced off of eyeglasses, and at least no one had jumped him yet. And at least the damned headache he'd gotten with that sake had started to dissipate with the surge of adrenaline.

No answer.

"Who?" His voice was a little louder, and he wasn't sure if it was the sake or returning courage. "Who is it?"

A little muffled whimper, and then a sideways motion accompanied by a soughing of cloth. It was a child, about ten, with a torn robe and bruises, cringing away from the man. Tatsumi, entirely relieved now, sighed and picked up his key and started to jam it into the lock, turning his back to the boy. _One of those poor wretches with a drunkard father or something.This town's getting worse every year. Murders and suicides._ However, he made the mistake of turning, and in turning he saw the child, only now there was no sound and he had crumpled sideways onto the road. Tatsumi made an impatient noise and went to pick the boy up and into his house. _And kidnapping too. _ He closed the door behind him and dryly chuckled.

*

Tsuzuki saw his shadow on the wall of the infirmary and neatly brought his legs under and around to land solidly on the window ledge. Sometimes the flying was just so convenient. He peered in and groaned. The window was locked. He considered, still catching his breath. Byakko wouldn't be much help, nor would Suzaku or Touda. And just beyond the block of moonlight on the floor, where he could _sense_ it, was Hisoka. Hisoka lying half-dead, probably. He wanted to curse or cry. _God, no_! In his head the screams still rang. And then in a tumult of glass he was on the floor of the infirmary, next to the white hump of the bed, frozen with astonishment. 

It was amazing how calm Hisoka looked while the sobbing pleads for help still went on echoing in Tsuzuki's mind. Bending down, he put his hand on the cold cheek and wished fiercely for something to happen. Maybe Hisoka could sense him even in sleep. _Please. Let him not be afraid anymore. Hisoka. I'm here. _

*

The child was still and unmoving in sleep. Tatsumi had put him on the tatami and had left him there, pretending not to notice how very smoothly flawless the skin was or how the half-forgotten fear and the memory of hating that artificial child of a decade ago had jumped in him when he had picked up the boy. _Coincidence_, said Tatsumi silently, to the ceiling of his bedroom. _That boy is dead. Like anything perfect, like any idol. He is dead._

*

He was sleeping; he knew this because he could not open his eyes. He was not in his bed in Ruka's house, though. His brain, under the closed lids, worked at why he was not in his bed, and a trickle of images came to him. As he walked home the adults whispering like they always did, covert but behind their obviously raised hands. He didn't care about them very much, having been whispered at for as long as he could remember. They were not important to him. But then there were the children, the vicious children that he knew only by their clawing fingers and balled fists and feet that mercilessly came at his back and stomach and stamped on his fingers and, most of all, at his eyes. "Purple-eyes, purple-eyes," they would chant at him and all the while hands and legs and feet and even open biting mouths fell on his body. If he tried to protect himself, tried to curl up like a newborn, they simply laughed (half-nervous and half-mocking) and kicked harder. And then he gave up, and then he was here, in this place that was not Ruka's house. The bruises on his face and the black eye that was forming steadily did not concern him. He was frightened because he could not open his eyes, and Ruka wasn't there to soothe him. _Help._ He called for someone far away, who answered, _I'm here_.

Amazed, he tried calling, louder. _Help me._ He did not know who the other was, but could feel no malice. In fact, there was a reassuring familiarity in the other voice, close to the feel of Ruka's presence when she sat by him and pressed a hot towel to his hurt face (not necessary because it would always be healed by the next morning). But this voice was male. And it somehow made some part of him quaver. _Hisoka_, said the other voice from faint and far away. He recoiled. The other voice had not been for him, after all. But still he couldn't push his mind from hearing that voice, so eagerly did the part of him that had quavered want to hear it. _Hisoka!_

*

In the block of moonlight Tsuzuki was weeping. "Hisoka!"

*

Tatsumi Seiichiro thought he would be sick when he saw the eyes of the boy who sat on his floor. Gripping a fold of his Western clothing(for work), he stared and stared and thought he would be sick, and only moved when he'd convinced himself that it was the hangover. Whoever had brought the sake and had added god-knows-what in his was going to pay. Literally. He felt a bit better and sat, ignoring the boy and his unholy purple eyes as best he could. His stomach complained, and he went to bring out the pickled radish and some leftover rice. The boy watched him eat his breakfast, solemn, and he looked up once from his bowl to note with a large lump in his throat that the black eye and cuts and purple-black bruises he'd seen even in darkness last night had wholly disappeared. And he hadn't been imagining the injuries, for the child's kimono looked as though it'd been dragged through the teeth of a shark. _Oh God_. There was now no doubt at all. This was _the_ child. What a horrible mistake that he should meet it so much later. A hysterical giggle wanted to push into his mouth, and he suppressed it with great effort. And he'd wanted to think it was dead. 

"What's your name?" _What a grossly inappropriate question_. But there wasn't much to say.

"Asato."

Tatsumi breathed in, deeply. Talking to something he'd seen created from invisible cells was more than vaguely disturbing, and his stomach threatened to revolt again. "Were you lost?"

"No." Asato sat with his purple eyes still unswerving from Tatsumi, the unnerving habit of children. "I got in trouble. Thank you for taking me here." He got up with a mature grace and bowed. Any other child would have been lovable and cute, but this one was just so unsettlingly correct in everything. And then the boy looked at Tatsumi with his eyes that were agelessly knowing, and went out.

Note: My my my, Tatsumi and Tsuzuki in another life! Or is it Tatsumi and Hisoka-in-Tsuzuki's body? 0_o Either way, it's still just as crazy as ever. If anyone deigns to comment, I will respond immediately and will also love you forever. ;_; And if you're still entirely confused, I shall clarify as well. Thank you for reading. Hopefully there'll be only 1 more chapter to go! -e.k.b.-


	5. Chapter 4

Idols I have Loved so Long

By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )

Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. Otherwise, I'd put myself in the canon...

All comments, etc., are welcome. Notify before archiving. Slight T/H, T/T. Takes place sometime after Kyoto Arc but before Gensou Kai Chapter. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~

****

Idols I have Loved so Long-A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction

CHAPTER FOUR

*

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long

Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong;

Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup,

And sold my Reputation for a Song.

-_The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_, LXIX

***

In the early shell-colored light of morning he went down the steps to the street and started walking, taking occasional bites of the leftover rice cake in his right hand as he went. He knew Ruka would be watching his passage down the road; he could strongly sense her behind him, a luminous contented pink mixed unevenly with the gray of worry and indecision. He finished the rice cake and started on another before he realized that he was in the vicinity of a large group of young people in the assorted uniforms of the town's handful of secondary schools and had already been seen and so could not move to avoid passing among them. From the window where she watched Ruka's contentment disappeared and the quivers of gray darkened as he approached the students, several of whom were in his own class.

"Oh look," they said as a greeting, lifting eyebrows and hands (to conveniently whisper behind if necessary), just a fraction later than propriety demanded, "it's Tsuzuki Asato-kun!" "Tsuzuki!" The boys of the group asked, superficially kindly, if Asato was going to join any of the clubs at school this year, _finally_. The girls simpered, saccharin, giggling at their companions' ingeniously barbed questions.

The haze of Ruka's worry sharpened, and Asato wriggled his toes in his shoes and said nothing, continuing to walk until an ankle appeared from nowhere and he flailed towards earth.

***

It was cold.

A patter of something stinging against his cheek, and then colorless silence. He sent his mind in concentric circles, frantic, panting for even the slightest motion of any nearby human presence, and found none. None anywhere, for miles and miles...dozens of miles, hundreds of miles.

In his dreaming he wept.

***

She was always so patient with him, practically dragging him along the floor to the beat of the music (which he could never catch). "And _one_-two-three and _one_-two-three...you're doing better.Western dance isn't easy to learn."

"Right." He dropped onto the tatami with a sigh. "And fish can fly."

Ruka smiled at him. "Are you hungry, Asato?"

"Er..." his stomach grumbled loudly. "Yes."

As she made him his early supper he glanced pensively at her back. "What's the matter?"

"Ah...nothing. I just...heard something. It's nothing." _I feel like I'm crying...but why?_

***

Some time ago his fingers had started to dig into the mattress, and he pulled himself from the bed with a frightful stiffness in his upper back and shoulders. Less than ten inches from the tip of his nose Hisoka's face, pallid under the moon and smeared with tears. He pushed the small distance and with a snuffle pressed his face into the soft wet skin. Perhaps wherever Hisoka's mind had gone in his dreams, he would come back if he could feel Tsuuzki nearby...he breathed in, deeply. Let him hear me.

***

Coming through the whiteness, a face.

A lovable face. So familiar. He couldn't see it because of the snow--if it was snow. The name almost out of his throat and in the warm air. Ruka's face? The blood-warm air...Ruka's blood on the street, and not a little pockmark on the front of the foreign carriage...Ruka's blood and his hands, wet with it. And then he was lying in it and he was sobbing in it and then cold. Was it Ruka's ghost?

"Ruka." He called the ghost and it shivered; he shouted, thinking that like a candle's flame it would vanish. Instead it solidified like ice and pushed at him and cupped frozen arms around him and caressed him and called him Asato and he could only cry heavingly into its hard shoulder. The tears melted the ice and the shoulder was warm and human and the colored thoughts flooded his brain and he welcomed it. And knew who the face belonged to, suddenly, and he cried, "Tsuzuki!"

The face was bent above his head but the voice was so distant he cringed. "Hisoka."

"Where?..."

"Asleep."

"Oh." And then the voice was there against his ear and breathing hotly and his eyes were open, and he stared at a perfectly round and enternally white moon, his ears singing. 

"And now you're awake." He was also very warm, and knew precisely who was holding him as though he were a buoy in an endless ocean no longer chill.

***

"My god, Tsuzuki, no wonder Hisoka-chan slept for so long! D'you know what you slipped in this mousse of yours?"

"...Oops. Guess I accidentally used the ground-up what-you-call-it instead of sugar..."

"That would be _my_ ground-up what-you-call it, thank you very much!"

Hisoka put down his book and proceeded to bellow at Watari. "And you finish the chemical tests _after_ I wake up? And what about that sleeping medicine stuff?" He kicked the door shut as a frightened scientist ran out and glared at his partner. "You know what Tatsumi-san will say about the window..."

Tsuzuki sniffled. "Yes." He looked up when Hisoka didn't say anything and asked, gently, "What did you...er, dream about? No, you don't have to tell me," he added upon seeing Hisoka's expression darken, "I...I can probably guess."

Suddenly the boy had lunged at him and was stammering something incoherent and choking him with a vise-grip around the neck and crying, all at once. Wide-eyed he pried the hands from around his windpipe and wondered if Hisoka had been trying to kill him or talk to him. Perhaps he should have just left like Watari...

"Never leave me alone!" Hisoka looked up, a fierce trembling threatening to take over his face and crumple it like a child's. "Please!"

"I'm...sorry," said Tsuzuki, trying to look like this was perfectly normal behavior and of course he would be glad to hear his partner out instead of running off to get himself some pastry. Nice, comforting pastry that didn't pop out with freakish emotional breakdown episodes every now and then.

"I saw...I saw _you_." 

"Me?"

"Ruka...and you...only I was you and I saw--I saw what happened."

Tsuzuki's lips felt paralyzed. "Happened?"

"With the accident. Ruka and...you." Hisoka was beginning to get uncomfortable, now. "The carriage..."he trailed off when Tsuzuki lowered his head. "I...I suppose you know." He stiffly put out his arm and dropped it, regretting ever telling Tsuzuki what he'd seen. _He's too fragile, I should have kept quiet..._

"How could you have seen?!" Tsuzuki caught his arm as he tried to slip past. "How?..." His grip around Hisoka's hand loosened. "It's all my fault. You see? I was...am a killer. I killed her." He clenched his teeth and dragging his hand over his face, said, halfway between a whisper and a scream, "I'm a killer! I...now you know. You've seen it. And of course it hadn't been an accident, Hisoka. It was my fault. It was...all my fault..." His partner flung arms around him, arresting his words. "Don't." 

"Hi--"

"It was an _accident._" Hisoka closed his eyes, willing his mind to shut out the terrible montage, playing over and over in his head. Ruka smiling as she took her brother's hand, and then the dark shape behind her, a black metal monster (a man with glasses and fearful blue eyes behind the panel of glass). And he saw it before she did but stood there unmoving and then she ducked in front of him, trying in her last instant of life to protect him. And then silence. And then her blood on his hand, her bloodstained and broken hand limp in his own. _Her blood..._ With a start Hisoka pulled himself from Tsuzuki and, panting, put his hands to his temples. _I forgot...he must have remembered that and I must have just read it. Or was it me who remembered? Are we even any different anymore?_

__

No. We were never different at all. We both...we both lost our idols. We both lost everything...

But at least, said Tsuzuki's voice, softly, in his mind. _At least we've got each other._

END IDOLS I HAVE LOVED SO LONG

***

CODA

"My lord," said Konoe-kachou, bowing to the empty throne. "They've...it's happened."

"Yes." The room reverberated with the one word. "We hope Tsuzuki is all right? And his young partner?"

"They're fine." Konoe looked up slightly, almost timidly. "My lord, do you think Tatsumi-san will suspect?"

"No."The voice was firm. "The spell we put on him and Tsuzuki when he first arrived in our realm was very strong. Unless Kurosaki one day reveals all of what he had seen, our spell cannot fail. Neither Tsuzuki or Tatsumi will know what Kurosaki now alone knows. And we doubt he remembers everything from the dream. But," the voice of Enmadaiou hardened, "if he shows signs otherwise, then we will have to silence him."

"Yes, my lord." Konoe bowed. 

"Go, then."

"Yes, my lord." The great doors shut behind the Kachou, and only Enmadaiou was left on his golden throne. 

"Tsuzuki...fate made you." He went to the shelves lining one enormous wall of his hall and a sheaf of papers bound together with countless spells floated to his hand. "Your fate...not even we know." He looked up to the ceiling, decorated with hundreds of impossibly delicately hand-carved dragons and mystical beasts, horns and scales and feathers everywhere. "You are the first and the last. And all we knew was that you are the key. The key to everything."

END CODA

Afterword (Afterparagraph, more like): Well. Is this the beginning of an epic saga? *cue dramatic Star Wars-esque music* Depends on the kind of feedback I get, of course! ~____~ Any questions can be cleared up by a simple email, and whatever kinds of comments will be welcome(Although if you try to flame me, be prepared for a war...*evil look* ). -e.k.b.-


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